Emanuel, federal officials target oil shipment safety

Mayor urges fee on rail cars carrying dangerous substances

After two major derailments and explosions in recent weeks, federal safety officials recommended new rules Thursday on how crude oil is transported — the same day Mayor Rahm Emanuel called for fees on rail cars carrying hazardous materials.

The National Transportation Safety Board — which for decades warned of dangerous flaws in the design of older-model tank cars — called for rerouting oil shipments around populated areas and other safety measures.

Emanuel, addressing the nation's mayors in Washington, proposed that a national hazardous freight fee be assessed on rail cars carrying dangerous substances. He was motivated, he said, by rail disasters, including a blowup last July at Lac-Megantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people. Emanuel compared it to Dresden, Germany, after Allied firebombing in World War II.

The fee, he said, would be used for rail safety spending, to fund the costs borne by first responders and to help communities hit by rail disasters get back on their feet. His proposal, he said, was supported by the mayors of Peoria, Ill.; Milwaukee; Philadelphia; Kansas City, Mo.; and Madison, Wis.

"If something, God forbid, happened in any one of our cities, I know that the police and fire (departments) would be there instantaneously, and FEMA would come about 96 hours later," Emanuel said.

About one-quarter of the nation's rail traffic moves through Chicago, passing nearby parks, businesses and heavy industry, he said. A tank car derailment could result in the kind of devastation "that we haven't seen in this country in a long time," the mayor said.

The two recent derailments — one Dec. 30 near Casselton, N.D., one Jan. 7 in New Brunswick, Canada — as well as the Lac-Megantic explosion all involved older-model DOT-111 tank cars, which federal officials have declared unsafe. Neither the North Dakota nor the New Brunswick explosions resulted in loss of life.

Locally, some officials say it is only a matter of time before a wreck involving the DOT-111 tank cars causes another catastrophic loss of life.

"BNSF tracks come right through the heart of our downtown," said Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner. "The safety of DOT-111s needs to be dealt with, and it needs to be dealt with yesterday."

U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., who sits on the House Transportation Committee, said Thursday he was warm to Emanuel's ideas but wanted more details. Most of the proposals would require action by Congress, which he said has "very little appetite for imposing any new fees anywhere."

On Thursday, the NTSB joined Canada's Transportation Safety Board in recommending further regulations for transporting crude oil by rail.

"The large-scale shipment of crude oil by rail simply didn't exist 10 years ago, and our safety regulations need to catch up with this new reality," NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman said in a news release. "While this energy boom is good for business, the people and the environment along rail corridors must be protected from harm."

The agency's recommendations call on the Federal Railroad Administration and the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to reroute crude oil shipments around populated and sensitive areas.

Another proposal would establish an audit program to ensure that railroads have adequate resources to respond to "worst-case discharges" of an entire train load of oil and make sure shippers and railroads properly classify the materials they are transporting, the NTSB said.

At the Federal Railroad Administration, part of the Transportation Department, Associate Administrator Kevin Thompson said in a statement that the proposals to improve the safe transportation of crude oil were welcomed.

Aurora's Weisner said that while some of Emanuel's ideas are intriguing, the NTSB's proposals likely will do little to increase safety.

"Unless they take care of the fundamental problem with the tank cars, most of this is just smoke and mirrors," he said. "It has some value, but it's not going to cure the problem."

The amount of crude oil transported by rail has grown dramatically, due in large part to a surge in oil production in Canada and the western United States. Without enough pipelines to handle the capacity, railroads have gone from carrying less than 10,000 carloads in 2008 to an estimated 400,000 in 2013, according to the Association of American Railroads.

While cars built since 2011 must meet greater safety standards, the vast majority of the approximately 92,000 DOT-111 cars in service have been deemed outdated and prone to catastrophic failure in the event of a derailment, according to the NTSB.

The agency first began warning of the car's deficiencies in 1991. The steel shell of the older DOT-111 is too thin to resist punctures in crashes, and the ends of the car are susceptible to ruptures. In addition, valve and other exposed fittings can break off in a rollover, the NTSB has said.